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Video games become a political platform as the US election looms

Playing with politics

www.thegoparcade.com

By Chris Baraniuk

VIDEO games aren’t just for fun – they can make a political point, too. Responding to current affairs is a growing trend in gaming, and is more evident than ever in the run-up to the US presidential election.

There are dozens of Donald Trump-themed indie titles on PC game store Steam. And bigger developers are also incorporating political themes.

Chris Baker, a former creative director at news and entertainment website BuzzFeed, launched GOP Arcade with friends this year. The site’s series of satirical mini-games pokes fun at conservative attitudes in the US, and more than a million people have played the games so far. The most popular title, Thoughts & Prayers, asks the gamer to tap one button to “think” and another to “pray” alternately during a spree of mass shootings. It’s a darkly comic comment on the rhetoric on gun control that follows real-life tragedies.

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“We talked about this idea of playable news – very lightweight games,” says Baker. He describes another game, Bomb the Right Place, as having an educational purpose: “It’s kind of an underhand way to learn Middle East geography.”

The rise of politically minded games has been facilitated by tools such as Construct 2 and Twine, which allow indie developers to turn out games in days, or even hours – ensuring that they can stay on top of the news cycle.

“It’s sort of a necessity that games that talk about these subjects have to be created very quickly, or you’ve already lost the conversation,” says Chris Klimas, who created Twine.

He adds that Twine games, which take the form of “choose-your-own-adventure” stories, can easily be shared on social networks because they are web-based. “It works very well with the ongoing conversation that people are having online,” he says.

Last year, a survey of more than 4000 US gamers commissioned by the Entertainment Software Association found that more than 80 per cent planned to vote in this year’s presidential election. There’s clearly a market, then, for games that tap into political issues.

“Games have a unique power to put players in a first-person scenario, challenging them to think“

And games have a “unique power” to put players in a first-person scenario, challenging them to think, says indie developer Akira Thompson, founder of US-based RainBros. After losing his job following the 2008 financial crisis, he designed Stop! Thief!! – a satire in which a pickpocket is eventually rewarded with a job at a bank.

Thompson says mainstream developers are also increasingly including politically challenging content in their releases – such as Mafia III, which was released in October. Its portrayal of a southern US city in the 1960s confronts the player with open acts of racism. “This game pulls no punches,” says Thompson. “It really shows you the ugliness.”

Meanwhile, modders – players who modify the content of their favourite games – are creating custom designs that feature world politics, often satirically. One modder’s take on the blockbuster strategy game Civilization V, for instance, adds Russia under president Vladimir Putin as a playable scenario.

Michael Cook, a computer scientist at Goldsmiths, University of London, says that politically charged games have the potential to inform players’ opinions, and players should approach them with a critical eye. “We have to make sure that we’re aware of the power of persuasion, misdirection and bias,” he says.

Thompson says the onus is also on developers: “We need to think carefully about what we’re saying.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “The rise of politically charged video games”